Rizzetta eyes Juve Stabia or Real Aversa if Napoli will not sell

Matt Rizzetta already has another club in mind if SSC Napoli stays out of reach. His investment firm, Underdog Global Partners, is looking at buying Juve Stabia, currently in Serie B (the second tier), or Real Aversa 1925, who play in Serie D (the fourth tier).

A deadline of sorts

The timing matters as much as the plan. Rizzetta says he is "confident" of reaching an agreement with De Laurentiis. But he would not want the talks to run too far into 2027 before turning to the alternatives.

Underdog first tried to buy the club in late 2025. According to Rizzetta, talks were still open in October 2026. The Napoli president, for his part, has firmly denied that the club is for sale.

The two sides are still far apart on price. De Laurentiis is said to want around €2bn. Underdog values the club alone at between €1bn and €1.3bn. For comparison, Napoli are 30th in the rankings of the world's most valuable clubs, valued at $795m, with $204m in revenue in 2025.

The multi-sport project and the "most important asset"

Rizzetta's ambitions go beyond football. Over the past two years Underdog has taken control of the men's and women's teams of Napoli Basket. It has an agreement in principle for the city's volleyball teams and has opened talks in motorsport, rugby, water polo and property.

The aim is to bring everything under one structure, a "multi-sport powerhouse under the Napoli brand" modelled on Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich. The plans include a basketball arena costing around €300m, with 12,000 seats for games and another 3,000 for concerts. Rizzetta expects the basketball team's revenue to rise from about €10m to €15m.

Later he would like to open the project to other investors through a fund that, by his own forecast, could pass $20bn in 15 to 20 years. The centrepiece, though, is still SSC Napoli, which he calls the city's "most important asset".

"Naples is experiencing a tourism boom. There's the Amalfi Coast, there are the hotels, the hospitality sector, restaurants and infrastructure."

His words are worth reading in full, because this is how someone talks when they see a place as something to make money from. That is not a crime. But supporters who have watched Napoli win two league titles in three seasons are entitled to ask whether, in this plan, the club is a team to be made to win or the brand that holds the hotels, arenas and funds together.

Calling plan B what it is

A second club moved and renamed with a Neapolitan football identity is a business alternative. It is also a way to put pressure on De Laurentiis over the price.

We are not a press office for the president or for anyone who wants to buy the club. But we know how this fanbase thinks. Napoli's identity cannot be copied by decree, and another club with a Neapolitan name does not become Napoli just because a registered trademark says so. Rizzetta knows it too: "Now we have no one to blame but ourselves if we don't manage it."

On the pitch, nobody is waiting for the accounts. Napoli are seventh on 14 points, unbeaten in three games, and on Sunday 1 November they face Juventus, level on points, at the Allianz Stadium at 20:45 CET (19:45 UK, 14:45 ET). The talks over the club have a date of their own, set by the man who wants to buy it: 2027.